This Week on the Farm 1/8
Well it has been a couple of weeks since we last updated and we have a lot of things to write about. Most of the work that has to get done this time of year involves paperwork and planning for next season. As of right now we have the bulk of our seed order purchased. We are waiting to order strawberry plants and our cover crop seed until a little later in the season, but other than that all of our orders are in.
Tyler spent two or three days planning a new drip irrigation system that can be added onto each year. Since we are adding about 12 acres of land for 2013, we needed to better our irrigation system in case we have another drought year. The plan that he came up with allows us to buy the backbone of the system this year, and then add a field at a time as we expand in the future. This allows us to delay some of the costs and will put us on a nice rotation where we can replace a couple of fields at a time and not have to replace the entire system in one year. I am very proud of the irrigation maps and schematic that he put together to help us put the system together this spring.
We finalized our budget for 2013 and we were able to fit almost everything into the budget that we wanted to. There are a couple of pieces of equipment that we are going to have to wait to buy, but overall I think that it will work well. This is the first year that we have an itemized budget to look back on and compare to, so that helped us out a lot. The first time we put a budget together we didn’t allow for the unknown/unexpected costs of running a business/farm, so I think we were much more realistic this time around and gave ourselves the wiggle room we might need.
It is tax season right now, so I am busy filling out all of the paperwork and sending in all the required forms. I enjoy doing our bookwork, but when it comes to filling out W2s and all that jazz I get a little nervous. There are just so many sites you have to visit and forms you have to fill out that I am afraid of missing a form. Thankfully I have my list of forms and can just plug away at them until they get done.
In non-paperwork related news, we redid our home office. I now have a bigger workspace so I don’t have to sprawl out into the kitchen when I am working on all of the paperwork. I think an office facelift is just the way to start the new year!
This past weekend we hosted an Insect Management Workshop for our fellow FRESH Food Connection members. We discussed different control methods for a variety of insects and we are excited to try some of the methods next year. We focused the talk on non-chemical means of control since we do not use any sprays on our farm. It was really nice to chat with other farmers about this topic (and others) and I am really thankful for this organization.
We hope everyone enjoys the warm spell that is forecasted for this week!